Maya's software development history

[caro_scheler]

Hi everyone,
I am a PhD student doing research on the history of software development in the field of computer graphics. Thus, my question is not related to actually using Maya, but to it's history. I have found several sources that say, Maya was first released in 1998, but the sources are not very solid (e.g. Wikipedia etc.). I was wondering, if there is any kind of documentation that I can get access to, in order to find out more about Maya's development. The release notes I could find only date back to 2013.
All I could find is this page: https://web.archive.org/web/20160110190511/http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?linkID=14271593...
Since this is not officially online anymore I don't want to support my argumentaion with this. 

I would be delighted, if anyone could refer me to somebody that can help me with this. Thank you very much!
Kind regards from Germany,
Carolin

[techvd]

Not a direct answer to your question but I would consider Wikipedia to be a very solid source.

[JabbaTheNut]

Hi @caro_scheler ,

It appears that Alias Wavefront, owned by SGI, released Maya on May, 15 1998.  Here is a link to an internet archive (i.e., not Wikipedia) which supports this information:

Alias|Wavefront Maya 1.0 

You will notice at the bottom of the page that there are tiles for other Maya releases and their dates.  It could help in your review of Maya's history.

[JabbaTheNut · Accepted solution]

@caro_scheler 

Here is another cool oldie:

Maya 1.0 Qualification Chart 

I found this deep in the bowels of the Autodesk website 🙂  It has some really interesting tidbits on Maya 1.0, what other software was part of the original cd, and other cool stuff.  This info also suggests that the Maya cd was produced sometime in February 1998.  Check it out.  It resides in nostalgia city.

[caro_scheler]

Thanks - well, I have guidelines to follow and I am not allowed to use Wikipedia as a source...

[caro_scheler]

That's awesome!! Thank you so much! 🙂 exactly the kind of thing I was looking for...